Is Microsoft's new 2024 planner enough? Or do you need Project?

We have previously written about how helpful and powerful Microsoft’s Planner is. It has just had a huge upgrade and so we felt that it deserved a new blog to highlight the changes that Microsoft has made to their scheduling powerhouse.

Microsoft is positioning Planner as a lite version of their feature-packed Project software. It now sits below Project Plan 1 and Project Plan 3 providing some basic project management functionality.

Below is a graphic stolen borrowed from Microsoft that shows how the three plans all stack up against each other

Courtesy of Microsoft’s The new Microsoft Planner: Meet the Makers and learn what’s coming next video

If you are the sceptical type you may say that Microsoft is positioning Planner as a gateway to their more premium product. Project Plan 1 brings the premium features that most project managers need, and Plan 3 unlocks the ability to use Copilot. But they are a business so maybe we can’t complain too much.

It’s important to note that the new version of Planner is only available inside Teams right now. It will roll out to web versions of Planner and Project later in the year.

Why the change?

The rationale for the new Planner is as follows: people use Microsoft’s apps to manage their calendars, tasks, and projects. These include Planner, Microsoft To Do, and Project for the web, which are useful business tools.

These tools help monitor processes and assign tasks. But they’re different apps. Moving between apps can be difficult. It makes a workflow more complicated. That’s why Microsoft’s new version is packed with features designed to simplify your project management journey.

What has changed?

The new Microsoft Planner combines:

• The current Planner’s collaboration features
• The simplicity of Microsoft To Do for task management
• The capabilities of Microsoft Project for the web
• The automation of Microsoft Copilot AI

The new Planner promises to be powerful, integrated, intuitive and most of all it’s built for collaboration.

Tasks, Plans & Projects in One Place

As you may have inferred from above, this update is all about simplification. Microsoft wants you to use their new Planner as a one stop shop for project management, no matter what size the project is. It aims to replace the abundance of connected (or unconnected) apps needed now with a single integrated app.

You can use the new Microsoft Planner from within Microsoft Teams or via a web browser so it’s available from wherever you normally work. Here are some of the exciting things you will be able to do with it.

Improved Teamwork

Collaboration is key as they say. Working remotely has become almost standard across many industries and people expect to be able to work on documents or in this case whole projects together no matter where they are.

Real-time updates ensure everyone stays on the same page. Features like shared task ownership and comments foster clear communication and efficient collaboration.

There are still a few features missing from this latest release that the community has been asking for: no manager view of several projects, no mentions, no granular user permissions and no formatting options. Still, improvement is always welcomed.

Copilot AI-Powered Insights

Microsoft is bringing the power of their Copilot AI to every corner of its empire and the new Planner is not being left out. It can analyse your progress and suggest adjustments to keep you on track, as well as help break down tasks into subtasks, identify work needed to meet project goals and answer basic questions on the overall status of the project. It can basically act as a project manager for you by creating plans from prompts and from your existing documents as well as answering questions on progress.

Although Microsoft promises all this, in our experience, it hasn’t quite lived up to the hype yet but Copilot is improving every day and we can see that even if it is struggling to carry out these tasks today it should be much more adept at them in the very near future.

Scaling

Microsoft makes a big deal of the new Planner being scalable and able to adapt to everything from personal use up to enterprise-level project management. Although they are not technically wrong, this does appear to be very much marketing hype. The platform is scalable in as much as the same framework can be used to manage a shopping trip or a three-year build project. We could also argue that you could do the same in Excel if you really wanted to.

The core concept of Planner hasn’t changed, and this isn’t some new fancy feature they’ve introduced. It just means that the system is inherently flexible and that’s a good thing. Add phases, add people, add tasks; it can cope.

What other new features have been added?

In addition to the big ticket headlines above that Microsoft has highlighted, there is a slew of changes that haven’t made their headlines but which we think are well worth being aware of:

Improved Navigation: A redesigned interface makes finding what you need faster and easier.

Enhanced Task Views: It has different views, like grid and board views. These let you customize how you see and organize your tasks.

Microsoft App Integration: Planner integrates with many Microsoft tools including, Power BI, Teams, Microsoft Viva Goals, Power Automate, and more.

Customizable Fields: Add custom fields to tasks. Use them to capture specific information relevant to your project needs.

Goal Setting: Define clear goals and track progress visually within your plans.

Critical Path: Identify the essential tasks needed to complete your project on time.

Improved Search: Find the information you need quickly and easily. The app has powerful search functionality.

What else is coming?

If you want to see what else Microsoft has planned for Planner you can check out their roadmap.

Summary

The new Microsoft Planner 2024 may not be everything that everyone wanted it to be but it’s still a step forward and makes big strides in integrating with Microsoft’s ecosphere of products. Fewer apps to juggle is always a welcome thing.

If you’d like help setting up or managing your Microsoft 365, and learning more about unlocking the power of Microsoft’s tools then get in touch with us today.